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City Administrator’s Notes - April 2013

Yard Debris
An issue we’ve seen recently is people dumping yard debris. Unfortunately, residents have few good legal options to dispose of their debris: compost it in your yard, get permission from a private land owner to compost it on their property, burn it or take it to the county dump. As a partial answer to this problem, the City is teaming up with the Underwood Conservation District (UCD) to hold a “chipping day” on May 18th. If you sign up for it, the UCD folk will send out a crew to your property to chip your yard debris. The chipped debris will then be dumped over by the community gardens for composting. Keep an eye out for more information as we get nearer the date!Pathway Repairs
Our pathways are in need of a lot of maintenance: we have root heaves, low-lying areas that often flood, and old gravel patches that need to be paved. Your Council set aside $20,000 to work on them this year, but that’s just not going to cover the need. Initial estimates for repairing paths are very high. At least 1,500 feet of pathways qualifies as being in bad need of repair, and our public works crew identified closer to 3,000 feet that needs some maintenance. Our bill just for paving (excluding staff time) would be between $20,250 and $40,500. We will be doing what we can to fix the worst of it this year. We will also be posting warning signs of trip hazards. Please be careful when you use our pathways!Water/Sewer Bills
I’ve noted in the last couple newsletters that we experienced a number of minor billing errors as we transitioned from the old computer system to our new billing system. We think we have now corrected those errors and about 2/3 of the city’s customers will be receiving billing adjustments. Since this revision comes late in our billing cycle, you can feel free to wait until the regular May billing to make payment. No late fees will accrue. Any account with a negative adjustment will be treated as a credit and will be applied to the May billing. Please contact us if you need further information. On a positive note, I am actively working to set the city up to accept credit card payments. More to come on
this soon!